"he believes church teaching against the death penalty carries less weight than its longer-standing opposition to abortion."

Not only does he believe it, but the Church does as well...

The pope's opposition to the death penalty was a concession to the culture of death (which supports going soft on murder), and it's sad that others are following him in that concession.

This is subtle. Application of the death penalty is morally suspect because it frequently partakes of vengance. I have been moving in the Santorum direction for a while. Had I been living in the 14th and 15th Centuries I would have taken a long, hard look aty slavery when the popoes condemned that institution as well.

We on the right need to be careful. One of the ways the left has been maneuvered into inanity, is that we have comprehended their penchant for blind reaction to the their opponents. If, for illustration, the Church issued a teaching declaring that eating manure was against Natural Law, thwe Leftist would shourt, "Yummy!" graqb his fork, and rush off to the fertilizer distributor. The effect of this is that they may be steered into self-destruction like a radio-controlled drone.

We need to make sure that we are not for something merely because some of our opponents are against it. I could be death-qualified for a jury, but as I see the distinctions among justice, deterrence and vengeance, the D.A. probably would like to strike me.

Lou - I am for the death penalty because the Bible, St Thomas Aquinas, and the Magisterium of the Church are for it. That the culture of death folks are against it probably should count in support of the death penalty also, but like you I'm wary of letting them influence my thinking.

Whatever happened to papal infallibility on matters of dogma? Did Vatican II supersede that ancient given, too? Or did I never properly understand it?

"As emotion always trumps reason in American politics, we know where this is heading."

Cities that look like Calcutta or Rio with lots of unwanted feral children running around committing all manner of crimes, utterly grotesque levels of poverty amidst great wealth with the resulting permanent level of civil disorder, and a judicial system that refuses to authorize the death penalty for murderers. If anything is to going to get me to work on my Mandarin, that will.

The death penalty matters because it enables us to eliminate those who do not belong in civil society, those who kill other members of society and those who feel free to commit violent felonies against other members of society. It's a lot cheaper and a lot more instructive if we have public executions of murderers and rapists than if we let them hang out in prison with cable TV and air conditioning. If a polis does not dispose of its members who commit violent crimes against other members, a key reason for its existence ceases to obtain.

And Bart proves my point, again.

And what point is that, considering that every society that has adopted what you propose has quickly devolved into Rio or Calcutta?

That talk of feral, unwanted children and a psychologically disturbing emphasis on purity make a nice emotional match with the death penalty, even though logically quite distinct.

ghostcat - The Magisterial position on the death penalty, which is based on Scripture, is that the death penalty is one of several just punishments for murder, and that it is the responsible of civil authorities exercising prudential judgment to determine which of the just punishments is morally best. What is new is that recently the Vatican has tended to recommend the view that just punishments such as life imprisonment will always, or almost always, be morally superior to capital punishment.

Because the logic about capital punishment relies on the same scriptural verses as the logic about war (just war theory), i.e., when is killing appropriate and good, this revision to just-killing theory also requires a greater skepticism toward the moral rightness of war, e.g. the Iraq war.

There has been no change in the structure of Catholic thought, but a tendency to emphasize certain elements more, and other elements less, in the prudential judgment phase.

P.S. - It's not popes who are infallible, but God; 'papal infallibility' is built on the notion that when a teaching has been clear and consistent, and embraced by the faithful, throughout the Church's history dating back to Christ, and a pope believes that that consistency could only have occurred if the Holy Spirit was inspiring the Church and the faithful to that belief, then the pope can recognize that consistent belief as having been fostered by the Holy Spirit and therefore infallible. You may have heard the phrase that the pope is infallible only when speaking from 'the chair of the Church,' i.e. not from his own chair, but with the voice of 2000 years of faithful Christians. A corollary is that a pope cannot pronounce anything infallible that is not supported by the clear and consistent belief of the faithful: if he did so, it would be a fallible act.

bart - Your posts are leading me to reconsider my support for the death penalty.

pj -

Thank you.

PJ: I think we need to name a new logical fallacy, recognizing that just because Bart agrees with a position, it is not necessarily wrong.

The death penalty has become a burden, but mostly because "modern" man (in the West) lacks the moral courage to punish.

The issue is not so much that DNA has proven how 'unjust' it is, or that it is applied unevenly, or that there is a narrow distinction among justice, deterrence, and vengeance (though all are to be considered).

The crucial issue is that the basis for the death penalty (as understood in the West), namely, the upholding of the personal dignity of the victim(s), has proven to be much too heavy a weight to bear.

Santorum based his thoughts on '116 people proved innocent by DNA', which is anti-penalty agit-prop. The actual number is miniscule and most of the '116' were guilty, but reprieved on technicalities.

Even in a 'just war', as the Pope called Kosovo, there are innocents killed. We give police guns knowing that sometimes, an innocent will be killed. Yet we cannot execute when someone has had multiple trials and years of appeals? Tell it to Terri--and she was a true innocent.

The failure to impose death in the most heinous and clear-cut cases is not moral bravery, but moral cowardice.

David, seeing the world as it is and not as I might wish it to be is not a logical fallacy and certainly not a failure of understanding. If you wish to continue spouting arrant nonsense which has failed time and time again to produce civil society, merely repeating the mistakes of Europe and elsewhere, that is your business. But in the words of Samuel Goldwyn,'Include me out.'

There is no society which has ended capital punishment which has not seen an exponential rise in crime. Now, maybe you don't believe that criminals should be executed or maybe you like living in high crime environments or maybe you are affluent enough to hire bodyguards for you and your family wherever you go( a necessity in Rio and Bogota). People unfortunate enough to live in those sorts of places have very different ideas.

As for feral children, the results of policy around the Third World speak for themselves. What little social safety net which exists collapses in societies with large numbers of kids. That's just economic reality. Just look at the societies with the highest birth rates, places like Guinea and Angola, those are real models for a country to follow.

And just what in the hell is a 'disturbing psychological emphasis on purity?' English is a lovely and useful language, David, try it some time.

I have just read that Jessica Lunsford, the little girl in Florida, was not only raped and killed, but was murdered in an unconventional fashion. She was buried alive. As Jim Hamlen and Noel said above, perhaps we are seeing moral cowardice in action (by a culture that itself is in its death throes).

Regarding Bart. I think his rants are funny and entertaining. I interpret them as sometimes tongue-in-cheek and no different than the supposed curmudgeonly remarks of OJ. Not that I necessarily agree with all of his opinions. For instance on the death penalty, he seems to think deterence is of over-riding importance and I don't.

bart - The social science evidence that I am familiar with is that economic and social progress leads to the birth rate reduction, not the other way around. The step from "large numbers of kids" to "feral children" is hidden from me, so I won't try to guess what you mean by that, and anyway I'm not away of anything in the social science literature on feral children.

I'm skeptical that any rise in crime is 'exponential', but I do believe that the death penalty deters crime.

h-man - oj has a much higher ratio of humor to error.

jim - Not only respect for the victim; also, faith that God is better able than we to deal with murderers, and that it's best for the murderer to be introduced to God expeditiously. Aquinas was convinced that the death penalty was the most loving course toward the murderer, as it was the most likely to cause him to repent his crime and accept God's grace.

That should have been 'aware', not 'away.' Regarding exponential rises in crime, I suspected they're more associated with gun control and the banning of self-defense. Since England banned guns and banned actions in self-defense (as in the Martin case), its crime rate has increased several-fold.

pj,

In East Asia, the experience has been that the introduction of birth control has preceded economic growth. Thailand is perhaps the best example.

The connection between large numbers of children and feral children in Third World nations is quite simple to anyone who isn't addicted to the Vatican's Kool-Aid. Poor families in Third World nations like Rwanda have lots of kids. There is no social safety net in Third World nations, so the families throw these kids out on the street to fend for themselves. Without skills and easily victimized, they turn to lives of crime, with a spectacular insouciance about what happens to their victims. As any halfway intelligent sub-Saharan warlord knows, you can get a ten year old to do things no adult would ever do. The most grotesque atrocities in Sierra Leone, Liberia, Rwanda and even Cambodia were committed by these parentless pre-teens. Cities all across the Third World are infested with gangs of these feral children. In Sao Paolo, the police kill them and throw them in the city dump.

In France, when they repealed the death penalty, the crime went from being far less than in the States to about 3 times that of the US today. In Britain, the crime rate is twice the American.

In light of PJ's explanation of Papal Infallibility, I'd like to declare another foorm of logical fallacy: the truth of an argument is inversely proportional to its length.

I think what PJ said is that the Pope really isn't infallible, except when he says something that noone has disagreed with for 2000 years. That's kinda like picking the winner after the race is over.

Robert - So you're ready to abandon evolutionary theory, the theory of relativity, and all other long chains of reasoning?

But your statement of the Church's position on infallibility is correct. It is like picking the winner after the race is over. That's the only way we can know it's infallible.

bart - I think there's a lot of confounding factors in those instances. Economic liberalization in East Asia happened at the same time, and a variety of changes in western Europe could be responsible for the rise in crime, including gun control and the criminalization of self-defense. I'm surprised you're not attributing French crime to Muslim immigration today.

The Muslim infestation, over 50% of the denizens of French prisons are Muslim, is only a part of the problem. If no Maghrebins came to France, the crime rate would still have increased dramatically. Self-defense is not criminalized in France and handgun ownership is restricted but far from impossible. The country has tons of hunters. And the Soviet Army issue AK-47s I bought off a Russian soldier in Prague are still in my cousin's wine cellar in Alsace.

The Thai government has specifically claimed that its birth control program was a necessary element of liberalization, creating a work force educated enough to advance. The King, who is worshipped in the country, has called on the people to use ABC.

I'm sorry, Bart, I never intended to obfuscate. You're a hater who denies that those he hates are human. Either someone agrees with you, or they are to be discarded. That's what I meant by a disturbing psychological emphasis on purity.

Sterilization of the Untermenschen

At least my views make economic and utilitarian sense and were standard American policy before WWII.(see Skinner v Oklahoma)

Posted by: Bart at December 23, 2004 06:36 AM

Do we really want these people to bring their babies to term when they have no means of supporting them, and certainly lack the emotional maturity to have kids?

Posted by: Bart at November 8, 2004 12:17 PM

If they instituted mandatory Norplant for people on welfare, much of the surfeit of births by Third Worlders infesting the First World would disappear.

Posted by: Bart at October 16, 2004 11:26 AM

IMHO, if we could reduce the population of the entire world by a significant percentage, it would have far more beneficial than detrimental effect. An America with only 150 million people rather than 300 million where that 150 million was selected by a mixture of genetic and environmental factors would be a far better one than the current edition. The same certainly would go for an India or China of about 300 million.

Posted by: Bart at October 16, 2004 05:15 PM

Why shouldn't we sterilize the mentally defective or the violent felons among us? Why shouldn't we sterilize people with genetic diseases? Why shouldn't we bar people on the public dole from reproducing so long as they are on the public dole? In a world of scarce resources, these people are unnecessary.

Posted by: Bart at October 16, 2004 05:48 PM

'Moral atrocity'??? There is no greater moral atrocity than wasting my time and money for no good reason.

Posted by: Bart at January 25, 2005 10:19 PM

Given a choice between abortions and feral children like one sees around Bogota or Calcutta, I prefer abortions.

Posted by: Bart at November 20, 2004 06:53 PM

Our current policy is hardly eugenic. It is if anything 'anti-eugenic.' It discourages the able-bodied and hard-working and ambitious from breeding through excess taxation to pay for the permanent underclass which can breed like rabbits and get an additional check and/or a larger place to live for each little snotnose they produce.
An intelligently-run eugenics program would have mandatory Norplant for welfare recipients, sterilization of violent felons, people with genetic diseases, the mentally defective, etc. Our current policy will have us hip-deep in the unfit in a generation or two. One can only hope the bear population, ineffectively controlled by hunting and 'bear contraception' can help us out.

Posted by: Bart at December 9, 2004 04:36 PM

I am a misanthrope and believe the world would be an infinitely better place with a lot fewer people, particularly those less capable of contributing economically. …
Hillary Clinton is almost pure evil and it is virtually impossible for me to discuss her/it without the use of vulgarities inappropriate for a family audience. She/it is worse than a true believer in leftist nonsense like Chomsky, she/it is a criminal who wants to pick my pocket to enrich herself/itself and make herself/itself look good in the eyes of the lumpier sections of the Lumpenproletariat. She/it is totally unprincipled and like Gary Hart, who brought anti-Labor,peacenik, trendnoid leftism to the mainstream of the Democratic party, the spawn of Satan.

Posted by: Bart at December 10, 2004 07:03 PM

Which is cheaper, locking a violent felon up in prison or giving him a painless lethal injection? Obviously, the needle is cheaper. Which is cheaper giving someone with an IQ under 70 a painless lethal injection or trying to 'educate' him and then caring for him for decades because he can't care for himself? Obviously, the lethal injection is cheaper. Which is cheaper caring for the childless elderly person on the public dole or a painless lethal injection? Obviously the painless lethal injection.

In the case of people on welfare, the use of temporary contraception, e.g. Norplant, is logical. Why should they be allowed to have kids when they can't support themselves, much less a family? Again, the costs to society, in terms of education, food stamps, free meals, free housing, free medical care for the undeserving poor are enormous. When these incompetent people have kids, mal-raise them, and they become criminals or wards of the state, who foots the bill then?...

Name one position here that is race-based. My views are based on a pure application of the efficiency criterion.

Posted by: Bart at December 13, 2004 08:01 AM

Sterilizing the mentally defective, say people with an IQ under 70, is a win-win situation. Killing them off might seem to draconian but sterilization gets us to the same place. The bad genetic material gets removed from the gene pool and the costs of subsidizing these people who are unfit to pay taxes or raise children get saved.

Posted by: Bart at December 13, 2004 11:46 AM

The 'Hitler did it so it must be bad' argument goes nowhere. First of all, Hitler practiced a precisely non-scientific policy based on myth. That does not mean a eugenics policy based upon demonstrable genetic realities cannot be successful. Also, does the fact that Hitler liked limited access toll-free highways keep you from using the Interstate system?

Posted by: Bart at January 25, 2005 05:28 PM

Those I Don't Like Are Untermenschen

While I would have voted against the parental notification law, because I feel that the parents for whom this is necessary have abjected failed at their duties or in many cases have abandoned their daughters to the schools and government and that someone who is a parent in the biological sense only is beneath contempt, mine is a minority position.

Posted by: Bart at November 8, 2004 06:36 AM

President Gore. President Kerry. President Hildebeest. President Hagel. Any of these traitors and quislings and vermin who infest our political system and who want to sell us out to the UN and the Euroscum at the earliest opportunity. Need I continue?

Posted by: Bart at November 29, 2004 12:11 PM

Do you remember the Clinton Administration? We had a Marxist, lesbian, alcoholic, genetic freak as AG for 8 years who, inter alia, immolated dozens of children in Waco because they worshipped differently from most Americans, and who shipped a 6 year old boy to a prison camp masquerading as a country. Don't you think she/it would be falling all over her/itself to comply with Judge Garzon and ship Bush to a Spanish hoosegow at the earliest opportunity?

Posted by: Bart at November 29, 2004 12:36 PM

If the perpetrator were especially vile, Bob Dole, the great Dracula of American politics, would be on his side.

Posted by: Bart at December 23, 2004 10:44 PM

That anyone could expect the political class and the jackbooted thugs of the constabulary to have reacted any differently strains credulity

Posted by: Bart at December 23, 2004 11:11 PM

The only areas that a student should be able to get public funding for are the math, engineering, the sciences and business. Everything else is just so much excrement.

Posted by: Bart at January 29, 2005 01:03 PM

Islam Is A Fanatical Death Cult, All The Adherents Of Which We Must Kill

How tough is it to understand that we are in a 'clash of civilizations.' Wherever you look around the world, it is Muslims murdering other people, even other Muslims. Until this Death Cult of the Moon God is driven back to Arabia and the Black Stone of Qa'aba is turned into radioactive glowing black gravel, there will be no peace and there can be no peace. It is us or them, and no amount of equivocation and wishful thinking changes that reality.

Posted by: Bart at October 1, 2004 06:41 AM

Islam as a religion is about one thing and one thing only and that is murdering non-believers. Until we in the West understand this as people like Charles Martel and Rabbi Meir Kahane (OBM) did, we will be nothing more than targets for the jihadniks.

Posted by: Bart at October 1, 2004 02:41 PM

As for your bet, one can only hope the Europeans will understand that they will have to do whatever they need to do in order to survive, no matter how much it offends the wet noodles among them. If it requires murdering every Muslim on the continent, that is a small price to pay and no one of any intrinsic value would be killed, no culture worthy of preservation would be harmed.

Posted by: Bart at October 1, 2004 04:22 PM

Stephen Emerson, Jean Raspail and Samuel Huntington already have more than justified any position I take regarding the Muslims. We are in a war to preserve our culture whether we like it or not, and our Muslim enemy will stop at nothing to destroy us. We therefore must take strong, draconian steps to survive.

Posted by: Bart at December 24, 2004 08:27 AM

A democratic, peaceful state does not need to subsidize the incompetent of the powerful in other countries in order to acquire influence and respect. Only a group of thuggish desert bandits needs to do such things.

The Saudis or the Iranians could easily hire someone out of al-Qaeda, the unemployed Ba'athist thugs, the Communists, the PFLP,Hezbollah, the Islamists or anyone else in that Star Wars bar that is the Islamic world to do their dirty work. What would it take for someone to kill the putative Vaclav Havel of Syria or Egypt?

Posted by: Bart at February 26, 2005 10:12 AM

There are however intellectually stifling and moribund cultures that are unworthy of our respect and we should feel free to wipe them out as needed (not the people, only the cultures) and we should certainly not shed any tears when they are wiped out.

Posted by: bart at April 4, 2005 05:30 PM

If you view inconviencing other workers at the plant an easy accomodation. While they're off baying at the moon or whatever, work continues to need doing.

Posted by: bart at March 22, 2005 04:34 PM

If you want to engage in the conceit that an agreement with a Muslim can have any value, that's fine. Just don't expect people with greater intellectual sophistication than your average short Welsh herding dog to share it.

Posted by: Bart at December 28, 2004 08:42 PM

John, the Arabs can't read either French or Arabic.

Posted by: Bart at December 3, 2004 06:58 PM

One other thing. If you go to some mother in flyover territory and tell her that her pride and joy had to lose his life so some gibbering savage could live, you might want to wear Kevlar when you do.

Posted by: Bart at September 9, 2004 10:02 PM

If we were to have entered Fallujah and in our best Classical Roman manner murdered everyone in the city it would have sent the clear message to the Sunni community that playtime is over and it is best for them to acquiesce to the new reality

Posted by: Bart at December 31, 2004 09:58 AM

Fanciful notions of democratizing the savages are only going to get a lot of American soldiers killed.

Posted by: Bart at December 31, 2004 05:21 PM

Americans will not be safe until we engage in mass deportations of the entire membership of that Death Cult of the Moon God.

Posted by: Bart at December 18, 2004 08:49 AM

The thing holding them back is that the Death Cult of the Moon God requires its adherents to be so backward and barbarous that our technological advantages over them will remain of seminal importance. However, they can inflict a serious amount of damage on us and on the weaker members of the civilized flock, like the Euros.

Posted by: bart at April 3, 2005 06:58 PM

That Karen Armstrong or Robin Wright wish to live out their 'harem girl' fantasies in the public arena does not constitute approval of the Death Cult of the Moon God by even an infinitesmal portion of the chattering classes, much less by Western elites or certainly Red State voters.

Posted by: Bart at December 13, 2004 06:36 AM

In Islam, if you are not a fellow-worshipper of the Death Cult of the Moon God of Mecca, you are not innocent, and are subject to death at any opportunity.

Posted by: Bart at September 9, 2004 10:37 PM

It is not as some appeasers and self-dealers would paint it, a struggle between a few 'Islamists' and America, but is instead a struggle between the 1.2 billion diabolists who belong to that Death Cult of the Moon God and the remaining 6 billion or so people on the planet. It is a struggle that will not end unless Islam or civilization is eradiacated from the planet, and civilized men must not shirk from their responsibility to defend what is ours.

Posted by: Bart at December 31, 2004 06:40 AM

The quicker that that death cult of the Moon God is thrown on the dung heap of history the better off the world will be.

Posted by: Bart at October 12, 2004 10:24 PM

The President And His Entire Family Are Traitors

And the notion that Bush will stand up to Saudi pressure is absurd. Who'll pay for his brother Fredo (excuse me, Neil) Bush?

Posted by: Bart at February 25, 2005 05:51 PM

Osama is in Monte Carlo where dialysis is readily available. Bush won't grab him because the Saudis pay his family to keep the terrorists safe. Do they give Fredo,excuse me Neil, Bush money because he's good-looking?

Posted by: Bart at October 22, 2004 11:14 PM

Anyone familiar with what went on in the White House of Old Bush knows that Cheney and Schwarzkopf wanted to finish the job but that Colin the Clown didn't. When Old Bush's Saudi paymasters ordered him to stop the advance, like the dutiful houseboy he was and is, he did what they told him to do, leaving it for his son to finish. That the delay cost the lives of millions of people in Iraq, Kurdistan, Israel and the US was of no moment to that pathetic walking piece of excrement, Old Bush, as long as he could keep cashing those Saudi paychecks.

Posted by: Bart at September 30, 2004 07:44 AM

Old Bush sent our troops into the region at the behest of his Saudi paymasters and when they were satisfied, ended the war. The Saudis called the shots and that inbred Yankee scumbag did what he was told like some Stepin Fetchit in whiteface.
Posted by: Bart at September 30, 2004 06:31 PM

Old Bush went exactly as far as his Saudi paymasters would let him, essentially making American military men look like little more than mercenaries for the Saudi desert bandits. This disgusted pretty much every decent American. It was also over and done with a year before the election.

Posted by: Bart at December 23, 2004 08:09 PM

Old Bush did only what his Saudi paymasters wanted him to like the 3d rate henchman that he is.

Posted by: Bart at October 19, 2004 01:55 PM

A forceful statement on Darfur, a stated tough policy on ending the genocide and the broader Muslim enslavement of Black people all across the Sahel might engender support in the Black community, however I don't expect Bush, whose disgusting father and brother, Fredo excuse me Neil, are on the Saudi payroll, to do that.

Posted by: Bart at September 4, 2004 11:08 PM

Meir Hahane Wasn't The Jewish Al Sharpton, He's My Brother

When I was a kid, like lots of Jewish kids of my age, I truly admired the Rabbi Meir Kahane(OBM). He was the first Jewish leader who confirmed lessons my DAV military officer dad taught me about never being victimized, about never taking crap for being Jewish and never apologizing for it. He was a breath of fresh air compared to the message being sent by the official Jewish community that we should knuckle under to the predatory minority group members who made our lives miserable, and those of our grandparents and the less fortunate of our faith so horrible in places like Brownsville and Crown Heights.

Posted by: bart at April 5, 2005 03:36 PM

Shiv Sena is trying to defend the Hindutva from the Muslim thugs, and from the Fabian BS artists of the Congress Party like Nehru. Naturally, that makes the nihilist, trendnoid West really upset. But then, they also designated one of my heroes, Rabbi Meir Kahane, OBM, as a terrorist.
Posted by: Bart at December 5, 2004 06:47 AM

The reality is, Barry, that many of these same characters, from Michael Moore to Ken Livingstone, would be more hard-line irredentist than the late, great Rabbi Meir Kahane had the Israelis been as slavishly pro-Soviet as Todor Zhivkov's Bulgaria during the Cold War, or as doggedly, suicidally anti-American as Castro is now.
Posted by: Bart at March 8, 2005 06:57 AM

Miscellaneous Bigotry And Hatred

The London Poles were made up of the same bunch of Catholic Fascists who passed laws similar to the Nuremburg Decrees only months after the Nazis did. Their forces in Poland were well known for murdering Jews or turning them into the Nazis for cash. They were complete scum.

Posted by: Bart at October 11, 2004 07:45 PM

The so-called Paleoconservatives are nothing more than a group of Nazis, Klansmen, Arch-Catholics and other professional haters who pine for the days when they could put Jews in ovens, lynch Blacks for looking at a White woman or burn heretics at the stake. To treat their 'movement'(it is a movement only in the sense that the excretion of solid bodily waste can be called a 'movement') as having any legitimacy at all is a disastrous mistake for the GOP. They have no votes and they exemplify all the worst traits of Western culture.

The GOP should tell these clowns that they are as welcome as boreworms on a wooden ship. They are a pestilence and should perhaps be rounded up and shipped to Molokai or Carville, Louisiana with the other lepers.

Posted by: Bart at November 9, 2004 06:47 AM

Or in the alternative, the public schools will simply be the repository for the kids the private schools do not want, i.e. the disruptive, the criminal, the mentally defective, people from 'inferior races' and we'll be back to Square One.

Posted by: Bart at February 7, 2005 01:26 PM

The sleazy, racist no-talent son of a sleazy, racist no-talent father. And I'm supposed to care for what reason?

Posted by: bart at March 21, 2005 01:21 PM

But they couldn't come to America, as a matter of law, so the fascists and arch-Catholics in the OSS and the corrupt collaborators with Hitler like Prescott Bush and the Dullest Brothers arranged for them to go to Canada, Australia and Argentina.

Posted by: Bart at December 6, 2004 06:27 AM

Like Islam, the Catholic Church is a totalitarian entity incompatible with democratic systems. History has shown that given its druthers it will dictate who should rule states, what type of economy they will have, who will rule in faraway places where the Church does not even exist. There is nothing democratic about it, it is a feudal vestige, nothing less than an cancer on Western Civilization. It is a perversion of faith, an exploiter of the ignorance, the hatred and the envy of the masses.

Posted by: Bart at November 12, 2004 09:26 AM

Powell always did what his paymasters, the Saudis, told him. He was little more than an errand boy who looked good in a uniform.

If there is a G-d in heaven, maybe the next time we see General Disaster he'll be parking cars at 21 Club or walking around the lobby of the Waldorf-Astoria shouting 'Call for Philip Morris!'

Posted by: Bart at November 20, 2004 08:26 PM

The fundamental problem is that private schools can select their students while the public schools are stuck with the common herd, including the crack babies, psychopaths, sociopaths, mental defectives, homeless kids, maladjusted kids etc

Posted by: Bart at September 7, 2004 08:38 AM

They are a land of odoriferous backward peasants led by a semi-educated soi-disant aristocracy. They are France without the culture, cuisine, wine, fashion, art, or style.

Posted by: Bart at November 5, 2004 07:46 PM

Sudan is almost a million square miles and has more people than Iraq. While its military are little more than jumped-up fuzzy-wuzzies, the country's sheer vastness requires a large presence.

Posted by: Bart at November 12, 2004 07:13 PM

Soon Mississippi and Louisiana will be majority Black and Texas already is majority-minority. So, I would not be so sanguine about population growth being good for people who are tired of paying handouts.

Posted by: Bart at September 2, 2004 03:27 PM

In Summation

Let me sum it up. THE KIDS ARE SCUM BECAUSE THEIR PARENTS ARE SCUM, AND THOSE PARENTS WANT THEIR CHILDREN TO GROW UP AND BECOME SCUM JUST LIKE THEM. AND THE POLITICIANS DO WHAT PLACATES THE PARENTS NOT WHAT EDUCATES THE KIDS. You see it again and again and again.

Posted by: Bart at February 27, 2005 12:46 PM

David:

Shock and Awe.

One thing about the Internet, people who attempt verbal murder can easily commit suicide.

Well, this is a thread about the ultimate sanction.

Bart - you have been given a great kindness. Remember that.

David,

Cute.

However, while I did use hyperbolic language(after all this is the Internet not Commentary Magazine), nothing I said was factually wrong and I recant nothing. If you're expecting me to be somehow shamed or cowed like some ghetto Jew in 1943 Romania, you have a very long wait.

As people feel safer about crime, the support for the death penalty weakens. As crime rate rises, support increases. Is this truly surprising?